Building Quebec homes, businesses with help from the Fonds real-estate arm

An architectural rendering shows the 50-floor Tour des Canadiens, to be built next to the Bell Centre with backing from the Fonds immobilier de solidarité FTQ.Courtesy of Cadillac Fairview Corp. Ltd.
/ Courtesy of Cadillac Fairview Corp. Ltd.

Something a Quebec family once told Édith Cyr has long stayed with her. The family had acquired affordable housing after the building they moved into received financing from the Fonds immobilier de solidarité FTQ, the real-estate arm of the Quebec labour federation’s capital fund. As a result, the family was able to move into a roomier place.

“They said: ‘It was the first time we were all able to eat around the table — that we had a big enough kitchen’,” Cyr recalled in a recent interview.

Cyr has heard other moving stories. One woman with multiple sclerosis was happy that she could now afford a place adapted to her disability, while other families were finally able to not spend such large portions of their income on lodging.

Her organization, Bâtir son quartier, has been partnering with the Fonds immobilier since the mid-1990s. She said millions of dollars in financing has allowed her organization to bring affordable housing to many more individual families than it could have if it relied solely on government funding.

Private investors and affordable housing advocates have had a history of residing in separate camps, with many of the advocates having been reluctant to allow the private sector to get too involved. “There was always a worry that if the private investors came in, the government would retreat,” said Cyr, who added that private financing will never completely replace government. Government involvement is always needed, she said, in order to subsidize the housing to make it more affordable. But the money from Fonds immobilier gives her organization an important tool to increase the number of projects they have been able to support. Many former detractors, she said, have accepted the private sector’s involvement.

The Fonds immobilier counts affordable housing as just one of many areas occupying its efforts. It has been involved in a variety of real-estate partnerships, from luxury condos, including the upcoming 50-floor Tour des Canadiens adjacent to the Bell Centre, to seniors’ residences — and from office construction to technology parks. Since its launch in 1991, it has invested more than $1 billion in approximately 300 real-estate projects.

According to a report from last May highlighting its activities, the Fonds immobilier is expecting to develop and construct about 40 projects over five years. With that kind of growth, its staff has gone from 13 employees in 1991 to its current 33.

While the financing of real-estate projects occupies a completely separate endeavour from the union activities of the FTQ, Normand Bélanger, CEO of the Fonds immobilier, said that with the union as one of its backers, job creation — coupled with the need to bring a good return to its shareholders — will always be central to its mandate. Those upcoming projects are expected to create 22,000 jobs in Quebec, while it’s estimated that more than 26,300 jobs have already been created since the Fonds immobilier began.

A union-backed capital fund specializing in real-estate partnerships appears to be a very rare bird, with the Fonds imobilier being perhaps the only member of that species on earth.

“There is no other real-estate fund like ours,” said 53-year-old Bélanger, who has occupied the Fonds immobilier’s CEO position for three of his 25 years at the Fonds network.

The office-leasing sector, according to Bélanger, is one of the real-estate sectors currently showing great promise as an investment, leading the Fonds immobilier to place a stake in an office-tower project in Griffintown, currently under construction. One of the partners in that project is Canderel, the longtime Montreal real-estate developer, which is also developing the Fonds-backed Tour des Canadiens.

Canderel’s Daniel Peritz, the company’s senior vice-president for Montreal and Ottawa, appreciates the Fond’s foresight several years ago in helping to develop the Quartier des spectacles, an area of Montreal where Canderel will also be developing an office tower.

As a partner, Peritz said, the Fonds immobilier brings to the table a profound knowledge of real estate in this province, as well as a host of other skills. “They bring an ability to analyze and understand the financial aspects of a project. They understand the elements that are involved in the construction and design of a project, and they bring a very strong financial capacity to help ensure the project materializes.”

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Building Quebec homes, businesses with help from the Fonds real-estate arm